I understand that the HEART of the "continuous loop with solo tagging" is something called the Solo Tag Rack, and that this would be a great place begin answering this long-awaited and greatly enlightening thread.

When you are soloing, it is always a guess as to which pieces of gear you will need for a particular pitch, especially on an aid climb. It's not like climbing when you have a partner who can just send you up the gear you need on your zip line! When you're by yourself, you had better make sure you have the right stuff with you, or you may grind to a halt mid-pitch, unable to move for lack of a critical piece of gear.

Traditional Big Wall Technology would have you put on your lead rack, which might weigh fifty pounds, in order to be certain you leave nothing behind!

Fortunately, there is a better way, and that is to use the Solo Tag Rack to hang all your extra gear on, so that you can pull it up when you need it.

You can also tag your lead rope bag on this rack, and the top end of your haul line.

You can click here to see a photo of my Solo Tag Rack.

Once you understand how to make it, then you can click here to see how to use it.

The Solo Tag Rack is the heart of the Continuous Loop with Solo Tagging, which is the better way to solo aid climbs.

Last weekend saw Lee (Manacubus) And I aid climb Cuddles 90 metres A3+ at Mt. Beerwah (Mmmmm beer) in the Glasshouse Mountains of South East Queensland. Anyway for my preparations for the weekend I decided to make it easy and use some of the better way tactics.

I made for myself a tag rack. So I got out all manner of bail tat and old slings and cobbled together an aproximation of what I thought I saw in The good doctors pic.

I ended up with a surprisingly good tag rack even if I do say so myself. I started with the central loop and tied other loops to that, each of these loops I made progressively longer so that when gear was placed on these loops the gear would sort of cascade down the rack so gear finding was made very simple.

All the nuts went on the top loop, the next loop which of course is an entirely independant loop held free biners and the next held cams and the next Pitons etc.

Back to the start of the construction phase. I`ve got my fifi tied into the rack but the top hole in my fifi is too small for the cordage I need to feed through, what to do,what to do.

Light bulb turns on inside head. I take a really small nut, one that the nut can actually slide up the wires. I pass the wires loop through the hole in the fifi and then pass the whole other end of the nut through the loop thence cinching the wire down on to the fifi and pushing the sliding nut down on to the loop, voila, I now have a method of detaching the fifi and tag rack from its preplaced position on the wall. The beauty of using a wired nut instead of cordage is there is no knot to worry about.

Very important to note here that I do indeed have some back up cordage bypassing the wire and fifi and tied into the tag rack haul line via a locking biner (small).

I only had about 30 feet of cordage to attach the tag rack to my harness and I found that even with this small amount of line it was still necessary to feed the rope into a rope bag so that it would`t get caught by looping underneath the tag rack, by the way if this does happen it wall cause untold grief.

We tagged perhaps 2 or 3 times in a 25 metre pitch and even when tagging out from under a roof it was a breeze. The key for using the tag rack is to be absolutely organised before leaving the tag racks position. If you don`t have everything just so then you will regret it.

Tagging is definitely the better way. I found that I could keep the gear actually attached to my harness to the bare minimum thus creating the conditions for some light gravity aid climbing.

When one is on a dodgy beak placement one apreciates not having too much metal hanging off ones person.

The link to the Continuous Loop with Solo Tagging doesn't work (at least for me), but from Pete's drawing, it looks like the only thing going up to the climber is the lead line. Do you have to pull up the whole rope to get your tag rack? That doesn't seem like it's the Better Way. I must be misunderstanding it.

No you have a zip line which is stashed in a rope bucket which is in turn attached to the tag rack. You climb with the zip line attached to a secure point on your harness and the zip line feeds automatically out of the rope bucket. When you feel the need to haul up the tag rack, simply pull the remaining slack which is in the rope bucket and then haul the tag rack up and hook it on to your preferred piece and then restash the zip line in the rope bucket ready for the next tag. Great system.

i tried this method about a week ago and founfd it reasonable, now as this was only 1 60m pitch of climbing it hink i would have prefered to putt all the gear on my gear sling, i think it slowed me down too much as i wasn't experinced with it but on a long climb where fatige will be an issue i can see it beng a good litle trick

: My question was ,, where is the haul line if its not tied to you,,NOT THINKING that it can be tied to the tag rack extention as well as everything else you dont want to carry. Ok,,I am that STUPID!!!!Of course,,the whole idea to the tag rack is to save wieght,, and have your guns at your finger tips, And the haul line is weight,, WOW. I am looking forward to practicing this in the summer. I really appreciate you taking the time to help.

To clear things up, there is no zip line when using the solo tag rack. The lead line is attached to the anchor, it runs up to you through your solo belay device, then back down into your rope bucket. At the end of the lead line is attached your tag rack. Also attached to the tag rack is your haul line, the other end of the haul line in attached to your anchor. That is why it is called the Continuous Loop system. When you need gear you pull up your remaining lead rope and attatch the tag rack to a piece of protection with the fifi hook. This way you only have one rope on you while climbing, thus saving weight. PTPP has another post about the Continuous Loop System somewhere but he hasn't put any drawings up yet... hint hint.